Doctor Admits He Prescribes Adderall To Poor Kids To Help Their Grades

Some doctors are prescribing stimulants like Adderall, medicines
created to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, to
low-income kids who are doing badly in school, a
new New York Times article says.

Michael Anderson, the doctor that Alan Schwarz interviewed for
the article, says these stimulant medications help kids stay
focused, decrease their acting up in class, and improve their
grades. The article says:

"I don’t have a whole lot of choice," said Dr. Anderson, a
pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of
Atlanta. "We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to
modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid."

Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken proponents of an idea
that is gaining interest among some physicians. They are
prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved
of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost
their academic performance.

Some people are definitely worried by this trend to chemically
modify childhood. These drugs are Schedule II Controlled
Substances, which means they have high potential to be abused and
they may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.
Their long-term effects (especially when started during early
childhood) aren't well understood, either.

Anderson does make sure to rule out other diagnoses before
starting a trial of these stimulants, Schwarz notes.

"These children are still in the developmental phase, and we
still don’t know how these drugs biologically affect the
developing brain," William
Graf told The New York Times. "There’s an obligation for
parents, doctors and teachers to respect the authenticity issue,
and I’m not sure that’s always happening."

An earlier version of this post referred to Anderson's
prescriptions of these drugs as indiscriminate, but on review
that choice of words was too harsh and the wording was changed to
reflect that.